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Pirkka Tapiola on the factors that stop reforms in local mass media

28 October 2015
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The Head of the EU Delegation to Moldova is worried by the fact that in the past year Moldova dropped 16 steps in the Press Freedom Index, which in his opinion is in part due to stopped reforms in mass media.

“In 2011, a draft law on the Broadcasting Code was developed due to funds from the EU and the Council of Europe, but it so happens that no one knows any more where this draft law is.” According to the European official, Moldova is slow in ensuring media ownership transparency or depoliticizing the Broadcasting Coordinating Council and the public broadcaster.

“If we look at the media in the EU, they focus on the objectivity of information and on respect towards the people. The role of mass media is to provide people with information, so that they can make their own opinions. It is a difficult issue in the context of the propaganda war that comes either from Russian media or from other places. But there is also an internal aspect: what I see when I watch different channels in the evening is that they transmit a content that clearly depicts a certain way of thinking, and not information, which is worrisome,” Pirkka Tapiola said in a speech to participants in the Media Forum in Chisinau.

It is not for the first time when the European official takes attitude towards the problems of Moldovan mass media. In an interview to Ziarul de Garda newspaper in early October, Pirkka Tapiola was just as concerned when he said: “There is a number of … I wouldn’t call them monopolies, but structures that have control over several televisions, behind which stand politicians, whose political agenda is very visible on TV. Even the recent protests were presented differently by these televisions, as if guided by the attitude of the political leader to them.”

The Media Forum will continue its works today and will adopt important documents for the journalistic community.